


"Don't Go"

by Aithilin



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Past Relationship(s), Unilock, University, returns
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-05-19
Updated: 2014-05-23
Packaged: 2018-01-25 16:31:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,737
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1655105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aithilin/pseuds/Aithilin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They were in university when Victor left. It was only supposed to be for a summer.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

"There are temples, you know," Victor once said, hands tracing the old maps pinned to the wall of their shared room— it was just a small flat within a decent distance of the campus. If they left early enough for lectures, there was a cafe about three blocks away that served a very good morning special. "Big old things that get eaten up by the forests and forgotten by the people who live there."

The flat was small— a single primary room where the mattress that served as a bed had been shoved against a wall. Textbooks cluttered up every available surface and notes had been scattered throughout. There had been many days when Victor would open a book on ancient cultures only to find sheets of chemistry notes tucked into the pages (it was still better than finding them scribbled throughout his sketchbook). Now, nearly three months after having moved in, Victor started to decorate the walls. 

Sherlock’s equipment— nicked from the labs or bought through school suppliers— took up what space the books didn’t. Something festered in the fridge and on the counters, and Victor had stopped fighting it. But the walls were his.

The first to go up were the articles his professors published. He used them as a way to understand what they liked to focus on— the language from the geology professor this term was almost poetic (Sherlock scoffed), and Victor liked to know what he should be looking at, or how he should write to each taste. It had worked over the past two years, to help him adapt, and while he started in on art classes later than he hoped, the drawings he’s done of architecture and bits of discoveries (even some from palaeontological discoveries along the coast) were pinned up with the articles. 

Archaeologists, after all, had to be able to identify the important parts of a find. 

"Can’t you just go up north?" Sherlock groused, a lot, about the plans to venture to Asia. There were some of the most overlooked finds happening in India and Cambodia— if only to record heritage before it was overwritten by development. "They’re always finding hoards in farmland. You practically trip over sheep and random viking junk."

Victor had just recently put up the maps, and marked each new find published with a colourful pin. “Professor Jules keeps her focus in India, with Doctor Brown as her anthropology contact. It’s a big opportunity, bee. I could be published before I graduate. I could have a contract waiting for me.”

"It’s India. You’re leaving me for a whole summer."

"A month."

"For India."

"For work."

"Don’t go."

"I’m going, Will. You’ll be fine for a month."

Sherlock flopped back on the bed, violin cast aside with all the flair of his usual drama. “What if you get eaten by a tiger?”

Victor grinned, leaving his study of the maps to lounge next to Sherlock on the bed. “Then you’ll have to find yourself a new boyfriend. Though I’d rather you didn’t. You’d be lovely in perpetual mourning.”

"I won’t mourn you."

"Why not? I was eaten by a tiger."

"You left."

"For a month."

"Exactly! A whole month! What if I burn down the flat?"

"You’d better not. You know how much these textbooks cost." Still, Victor smiled, even as Sherlock curled against him in a sulk. "India, bee. I’ll be on a dig in India."

"Doing the boring stuff. Like fetching coffee and taking pictures."

"But in India."

He felt long arms snake around him, Sherlock’s lips pressed against his shoulder. “Don’t go.”


	2. Chapter 2

Victor took a transfer for the new term. One of the supervisors on his dig left the post in England and took a new contract with a development team in India— they always needed experienced archaeologists to survey the grounds before new builds, and conservationists had started to get uppity about excessive developments. So they hired experienced diggers and surveyors, and people capable of classifying and cataloging the history. Students were welcomed, so long as they had a supervisor vetting them.

Victor stayed on the team he went out there with.

At first there were letters. Scraps of information and chatter that Victor knew would bore Sherlock. Then they went deeper. The further they went from the city with each new site, the harder it was to stay in contact.

Letters got lost. Work ran late.

Sherlock didn’t have the heart to get rid of the textbooks and maps and articles. Even when he fell to his worst— took up drugs to calm his mind, and Victor’s voice faded from his mind— he still kept everything. Had Mycroft put it all in storage.

It had been years later when he moved into Baker Street. Years later— after a new life and suicide and fresh start— when he retrieved the old keepsakes of university and piled the boxes in his room. The maps went up— fresh pins carefully arranged into the tiny holes left by decades’ old markers. He found the letters, stained by age, and marked the maps further as he found the places Victor had been. The textbooks replaced the missing novels and medical books in the sitting room.

He didn’t know why he did it. There was a nostalgia to it, a peaceful little remembrance of happy times before life got complicated. Remembrance of the first real complication. Sherlock could now understand why old physicians thought nostalgia was a mental illness.

When he had it all placed— the empty flat now a collection of his past and present, he felt that he could try to remember. It didn’t work, the Work was too consuming now that he was back to it. But an hour or two could be spent hunting down articles and names.

More and more if his work came through private clients shown in by Mrs. Hudson. He had taken to ignoring the chatter from the stairs when he heard it.

"You go right in, dear. He’s in a bit of a state, but you just talk to him."

The door creaked when it opened in summer humidity, but Sherlock didn’t crack open an eye. Instead he just spoke:

"Be quick about it."

He had to admit that he was startled when he got the response. Had jumped at stared at the client in shock.

Victor stood in the door— older, more tanned, but still broad shouldered and carrying a confident presence, a slight smile (the one Sherlock remembered the last day he saw him in Heathrow) gracing his lips.

"I need your help, Mr. Holmes."


	3. Chapter 3

The case was hardly interesting. In the end, it was solved inside of 72 hours. A case if an imposter trying to force his way into scamming a portion of inheritance fortune, misjudging Victors own lack of regard for his father’s reputation, and gambling too much on something that can easily be proven with a blood test. Victor admitted over tea that he hadn’t actually needed help, but he had found Sherlock’s blog a few years back and kept track of him since. When he returned to England to handle the threat of an Australian man suing for his “inheritance”, he couldn’t resist stopping by to see Sherlock again.

"You’ve been enjoying India."

"Of course."

"Then why the worry over this possible scandal."

"I wasn’t worried, Will."

"You came all the way here to deal with it; you filed the papers through our system, rather than going to Australia. You’ve lost sleep and skipped meals to devote attention to a man claiming to be your half brother and take the house in Norfolk. You—"

"I’ve missed that."

"What?"

"Your observations—"

"Deductions."

"Observations," Victor grinned at the glare that earned him. "I’ve missed that. You being able to just look at me and know what’s happened."

"But I don’t." Sherlock straightened, collected their cups, and returned them to the kitchen. He didn’t want to look at Victor. He didn’t want to see the friend who had left in the face of this stranger who watched him. He didn’t want to admit that he could see every hardship and triumph etched on Victor’s features, years of growth and maturity shaping him into someone new before him— greying a bit at the temples, scarred from too much sun and not enough thought of protection, a touch of stiffness from years of carrying buckets and buckets of dirt and crouching in the dust and mud to get to something new. He didn’t want to see it. He didn’t want to see _Victor_ , his Victor, sat on his sofa, looking part hopeful youth and part weary traveller. “I don’t know what happened.”

He didn’t want to see Victor’s sad smile. “I could tell you.”

"I don’t want to know."

He didn’t want to know that hurt expression— the one that creased Victor’s brow and dimmed the curious eyes he used to find fascinating. He didn’t want to know.

"Fair enough." It came after a few seconds’ pause. And he could hear the movement of the other man— broader now from years of hard work and unplanned adventures (a scar from a bad break in his wrist that needed surgeries to correct— he wondered if Victor still played piano after that; a slight dip to his shoulder where a phantom weight of packs and gear bags should hang; a curve to his spine where he was still stiff from hours spent crouched over a foot-by-foot square to carefully dust off shards of pottery). He could hear Victor collect his jacket and familiar satchel— worn and patched, but still the one he left their little flat with.

Sherlock forced the memories back into their portion of his mind— ran from that corner and focused on the better, more recent thought of the last case he needed to write notes for, and the tests he wanted to run at the lab.

He wondered if Victor still did lab work. Did he still sketch? Did he still prefer fish and chips to a five-star meal? Or did he still wrap his ridiculous holiday presents in comics salvaged from the newspaper.

He didn’t hear whatever else Victor said before he left 221B. But the sound of the door closing— a quiet, unobtrusive click— cut whatever was keeping him up, and Sherlock collapsed to his knees.

He took three long, shuddering breaths before he texted Lestrade.

_Baker St. Now. Please._


End file.
